Augustine’s contribution to religious thought is commonly characterized as profoundly inward-looking and so preoccupied with human psychology that it shows relatively little interest in the natural world. Furthermore, Augustine's pronounced eschatology has been interpreted as devaluing earthly goods. Given Augustine’s vast influence, especially in the West, judgments about this topic have come to have an outsized importance. Papers in this session examine the role of “nature” in Augustine’s own writings and subsequent interpreters, call into question previous scholarly characterizations of this aspect of Augustine’s legacy, and propose new perspectives based on fresh readings and new scholarship. While looking for resources in Augustine for our current crises, papers inquire into what are they and what their practical effects could be.
In this paper, I propose to draw on City of God to draw out underappreciated resources in Augustine’s thought which can help us think about our role in the created order anew. Exploring the ways in which he challenges Porphyry and Origen in their denigration of material reality, I will make the case that his portrayal of the creation as a “universal commonwealth” mitigates the hierarchical emphasis of platonic cosmology and instead emphasizes our dependence on and interconnectedness with other creatures. I will then connect this new emphasis with his contention that the order of nature is marked by an economy of service, not power. Finally, I will show that Augustine’s concern with our spiritual blindness complicates common contemporary ideas about what it takes to see our role in the created order properly, and points towards a more nuanced vision of how best to cultivate an ecological awareness today.
The current climate crisis presents an acute, existential threat to human and non-human life. While past readings of Augustine have characterised him as an ‘other-worldly’, upstream influence behind the denigration of nature and bodies, these readings tend to overlook Augustine's development vis-a-vis the senses, and his wider account of pilgrimmage to God via recollection in and through the sensible world.
This paper will explore how Augustine’s approach to nature develops from suspicion to ordered delight via an exploration of his accounts of memory, use, and pilgrimage while challenging past readings of Augustine that tend to overlook the importance of the senses, bodies, and sociality in his thought. In doing so, this paper seeks to demonstrate how Augustinian memory, use, and pilgrimage might not only texture and enrich a Christian doctrine of creation but also serve as a constructive resource for ecotheology in addressing our current climate crisis.
A common critique of Augustine in many contemporary theological circles is that he is so heavenly minded that he is no earthly good, insofar as his thought might be applied to our current environmental crises. In fact, however, Augustine’s thought requires a thoughtful engagement with creation for one to be able to contemplate heavenly realities. This is especially clear in his preaching, particularly his homilies on Psalm 103 (104). Augustine devoted no fewer than four homilies to it, which is replete with enough natural imagery to satisfy a preacher who was profoundly interested in interrogating signs and symbols found in the created world. What is particularly compelling is how he guides his listeners toward a deep appreciation of creation in order to use it as a means of ascent to the higher reality that contains and permeates creation, for, as the psalm says: “in Wisdom you have made them all.”
This paper engages with contemporary scholarship on the meaning and role of sacrifice in Augustinian studies, on the one hand, and environmental politics, on the other, in order to show how Augustine’s theory of sacrifice and society can undergird a constructive, theological approach to environmental justice. How Augustine distinguishes between true and false sacrifices, theorizes sacrifice’s power to bind together more-than-human societies, and analyzes the rituals and practices characteristic of different sacrifices can inform environmental political theory and practice at a time when environmental harms and injustices are concentrated in what environmental justice activists call “sacrifice zones.” Interpreting environmental problems and solutions using an Augustinian hermeneutics of sacrifice — or one like it — can help prevent environmental “solutions” that simply continue the cost-shifting dynamics that characterized the fossil fuel era and reveal alternative, more transformative pathways toward a just sustainability.